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Forum index » Archive » Archive: Chasing the Wish » CTW: General/Updates

What Wood would wand want....

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MageSteff
Pretty talky there aintcha, Talky?

Joined: 06 Jun 2003
Posts: 2716
Location: State of Denial

What Wood would wand want....

And where did Joseph of Arimathea land....
Arimathea Avalon grail servant

get same hits in both Cluesearch and Google (slightly different order at abouth the fourth one, but not by much) but check this site which is the first one in both:

http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/history/h-joseph.html

It talks about the first church ever built:

Quote:

It is not too much to say that the site of St. Mary's, Glastonbury, is the site of the earliest known above-ground church in the world

and what the place was like:

Quote:

Tradition still shows there Wyrrall or Weary All Hill, on which St. Joseph and his eleven tired companions are said to have rested on their first landing, for Glastonbury was an island in those days.

Myths

Quote:

One of these traditions was "that St. Joseph of Arimathea landed not far from the town, at a place where there was an oak planted in memory of his landing, called 'The Oak of Avalon'; that he and his companions marched thence to a Hill, near a mile on the south side of the town, and there being weary rested themselves, which gave the Hill the name of Wearyall Hill; that St. Joseph stuck on the Hill his staff, being a dry hawthorn stick, which grew, and constantly budded and blowed upon Christmas Day." The mere mention of 'The Oak of Avalon' awakens the deepest interest. There still linger two ancient trees called 'The Oaks of Avalon'. They are also called Gog and Magog. [One is now nearly dead, the other dying - ed.]
They are almost the last remains of an ancient Druidic grove at the foot of Stonedown (a name which bespeaks its Druidic use).

It further goes on about standing stones that were once there � in small text:
Old religions and new religions:

Quote:

(The dolmens and menhirs have long disappeared. Stones may be buried. More likely they have been used for building and road-mending. The writer always suspects that the church on the Tor was built of Druidic stones to assert the victory of Christ and Christianity on the site of the old religion. Near the age-long pilgrim path up the Tor there still linger three stones, very probably the remains of a menhir or stone table. Dr. Davey Biggs, in Ictis and Avallon points out how the Iberian metal-seekers built these stone monuments. If St. Joseph did land at this grove, the tradition that St. Paul landed at Paul's Grove near Porchester is of great interest. That tradition should have linked the landing place of both these traditional missionaries with groves is startling, the more so as the habit of planting trees to commemorate important visits still lingers. Rutter in his North-West Somerset, 1829, p87, in a footnote, gives a very unusual derivation of the name Glastonbury, as Glastan-byrie, the Hill of Oaks, which is interesting.)

And about what happened to the Oaks of Avalon:

Quote:

From them ran also an avenue of oaks which led towards the Tor. This grove and avenue were shamefully cut down about 1906 to clear the ground of a farm! The trees were immense. They were all sold to Messrs. J. Snow & Son, timber merchants of Glastonbury. Mr. Curtis of that firm remembers five boys standing in one of them called Magog when he was a boy. The real Magog was cut down and so probably was the real Gog. Magog was eleven feet in diameter, and more than 2,000 season-rings were counted. Besides the two trees still called Gog and Magog, there are, by an ancient narrow road, now a lane, the remains of five other immense oaks. The biggest of all (possibly the real Gog) is cut down and prone on its side, and looks from the road across a field something like a shed. In hedges there are two other giants just dragging out the last flicker of life, and there are fragments of two other dead monarchs (doubtless some of those that were cut down) in hedges. From the real Magog Mr. James, a late member of the firm, many years ago made a Glastonbury chair, candlesticks, bowls and picture frames, as a hobby. The oak is extraordinarily red and of an unique grain or 'figure'.

SPEC: So maybe the wand does not have to be a straight stick we are looking for, it could be candlesticks or walking cane, a chair or a table leg, or something else entirely.. but wait there is a second candidate for wand wood�

Quote:

On Wearyall there grew the famous Holy Thorn (Crataegus monogyna praecox), which is said to have sprung from his(Joseph's) staff which he planted in the fertile ground, possibly as a token of taking possession of the XII Hides of land which King Arviragus, cousin of Caractacus, granted to him and his followers, much as today we plant a flagstaff and flag when taking over a new territory�.
�.
various thorns were budded from it. One is in the Abbey grounds, a better one in the parish churchyard [St John's on Glastonbury High Street], and a still better one in the vicarage garden. There are others in various parts. It cannot be struck, but can be budded. It seems to be a Levantine thorn. Most botanists agree to this. Certain it is that, in addition to flowering profusely in May, it keeps the habit of blossoming again at Christmastide, but more freely on old Christmas Day.

And more on evil and struggles among the trees:

Quote:

There are remains of earthworks near Gog and Magog in Avalon. There are still two great oak trees in Yardley Chase in Northamptonshire called Gog and Magog which were depicted in Strutt's Sylva Britannica in 1830. The names seem connected with great antiquity, powers of evil, struggles, hills and oaks.

_________________
Magesteff
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2003 10:45 pm

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